The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for forming an element-free gap or a so-called space section in a slide fastener chain by removing one or more discrete fastener elements from the carrier tape to which the fastener elements are secured firmly.
It is a usual practice of nowaday manufacturers of slide fasteners that, instead of manufacturing slide fasteners of individual product lengths as such, a continuous length slide fastener chain is first manfactured by securely fastening fastener elements, which have been shaped by die-casting a metal or injection-molding a plastic resin, on to a tape cord reinforcing the longitudinal edge of the carrier tape to form an element row and then several of the fastener elements are removed from the element row at certain intervals to form so-called space sections free of the elements where the slide fastener chain is cut subsequently into the individual desired product lengths. Further, there may often be a necessity to remove several of the fastener elements from a slide fastener of a finished product length to obtain a shortened slide fastener, for example, in tailors and other users as well as in a retailer's shop according to customer's orders to have the slide fastener shortened to match the design or size of clothes or other products to which the slide fastener is to be sewn.
There have heretofore been proposed various methods and related apparatuses for forming space sections in a continuous length slide fastener chain of the above type with the above described purpose. One of the methods known in the art is concerned with cutting the coupling head portions only of the elements off the fastener chain within the desired section and thereafter removing the leg portions of the elements left in clinging to the tape cord off the carrier tape by pulling. Another method comprises the steps of pressing fastener elements within a section as desired into deformed, flattened configuration and thereafter forcibly separating the thus deformed elements from the tape cord. These prior art methods, however, suffer from the drawbacks that the carrier tape or, especially, the tape cord is sometimes injured as well as that the removal of the fastener elements is sometimes incomplete because the methods involve the step of forcible plucking of the deformed elements or element debris from the tape cord.